Those who are cynical toward an ISO 9001-based quality system often ask sarcastic questions similar to, but often more vulgar than, the one in the title of this article. These rude anti-ISOs just don’t understand us quality folks.
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The issue of how much should a company document keeps rearing its ugly head, primarily by the masses of document users who are told by some internal expert or outside consultant to document everything. Although I discuss how to reduce documentation within a quality management system in my book, Lean ISO 9001 (ASQ Quality Press, 2010), I will provide a different look into this issue in this article.
The answer as to how much documentation is appropriate can only be determined by answering the question, “What is the purpose of documentation (e.g., procedures or work instructions)?” For most companies, the purpose of documentation is to ensure consistency in processes via training in the documentation. People often say, “I want everything documented so that if you a) win the lottery, b) get hit by a train, c) divorce your fifth wife and leave town with her sister, d) get ambushed by Charlie Sheen, or e) win America’s Got Talent, then I can hire any hobo off the street to do exactly what you do simply by having him read the documents.
Yeah, right. That never happens, you say. Salami! I have seen many, many companies “train” new hires by giving them a stack of documents and having them sign a training record. I have seen even more companies do a bit more than this, but not much more, and assume that by completing this act of training heroism, which is completely disrespectful to the new hire, the new hire is now completely “competent” to do the job he was hired to do.
Pastrami, I say! Having overly documented instructions often is only a Band-aid for a poor training process. A supervisor may assume that by reading stacks of documents to a new hire, or having her read the stack, he will not “waste” gobs of time showing the new hire how to actually perform the task of interest.
How many times have you seen that the root cause to nonconforming product is “poor training?” Many times, right? So what do we do? Train them in the same crappy fashion we did the first time, hoping against all hopes that this time it will stick? Liver sausage! Or do we dig deeper and ask why the training was so crappy, and when we get that answer, ask why again, and continue on until the training system is blamed? You know... that whole root cause analysis thing? If we did this, did it continually and well, we just might develop a powerful training system.
Or, we could just copy and learn a proven and effective training system that Americans developed nearly 70 years ago: the job instruction module of Training Within Industry (TWI). Check out this website for more information on TWI and some of the original documentation.
Job instruction can reduce document length by 80 percent
The original creators of job instruction realized that to train competent workers, one needs effective, user-friendly documentation, in the form of a job breakdown sheet, which includes:
• Important steps—only
• Key points related to quality, safety, and job ease
• Reasons why they are key points
• Only value-added words
Coupled with effective training processes that are:
• Respectful to each human being
• Consistent
• Use many of the senses for different types of learners
• Involve repetition for both the trainer and trainee
• Allow for a progressive build-up of knowledge
These two requirements are not independent of each other. They must be coupled and used together to support effective training. One cannot have an effective training system with only a job breakdown sheet—or, for that matter, any sort of document by itself—and one cannot have an effective training system with only a training process and not a previously planned and documented job breakdown sheet. It is the former situation that many supervisors have tried to get away with by creating long stories instead of work instructions.
In the original TWI job instruction training program, a sample work instruction is created that describes how to tie a fire underwriter’s knot. I use this same demonstration today, and so do many other trainers. In the demonstration, a typical work instruction on how to tie the knot is read. Any one of us would write it in the same format as our ISO 9001-based quality systems, and it would end up containing about 13 steps and 163 words. When a job breakdown sheet is created for tying this knot, it typically contains about five steps and 36 words, and includes additional information as to why the key points are important. That’s a nearly 80-percent reduction in the amount of words and makes the job breakdown sheet very user-friendly to someone being trained, which is when it is supposed to be used.
How can there be such a huge reduction?
Two primary ways:
1. The first column of a job breakdown sheet form asks for important steps, not all the steps. For example, when describing how to adjust the blade in a hacksaw, long, work instruction-type sentences like, “1. Take hold of the wing nut, 2. Screw down wing nut...” can be shortened to “Adjust tension,” which is the important step. Instead of 10 words, it’s now two. It’s obvious that to adjust the tension, one has to grab hold of the wing nut, so it’s unnecessary to record that on a document. Remember, the job breakdown sheet has to be used in conjunction with the hands-on training process (which is not discussed in this article).
2. Most words are not important when training. Perhaps only 10 to 20 percent of words are important—and perhaps 10 to 20 percent of all steps in a typical process are critical or difficult to do as well. For purposes of flow and clarity, all words are important when we read a book, procedure, or even this article. But when a document is used for training someone, as a job breakdown sheet is, then the number of words, sentence structure, or punctuation are not important. We can get rid of the extra “the”s, “of”s, and “therefore”s, as well as periods and commas, and record just important words that will remind us of what to say as we train. In this way, we explain the process conversationally, and properly train the person with the aid of short script—the job breakdown sheet—without disrespectfully reading aloud to the new hire.
And of course we should not be adding these job breakdown sheets to our already overly-documented system, but rather developing them to replace other documents within the system.
Every company I have ever worked with has too many documents and too many words in each of them. The job instruction module of TWI, when done right, can significantly reduce the amount of words in procedures and work instructions while greatly improving the effectiveness of training.
Comments
Healthcare
Great article, Mike. This is a huge problem in healthcare - providing crappy training (dumping documents or through informal shadowing) and then blaming "lack of training" as a supposed "root cause."
Snausages!
Root Cause
“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”
Mark Twain
I have a feeling that in terms of documentation, the above applies. It takes a lot of work to distill your message info fewer words (or pages.)
More Rudeness
I have two experiences that reinforce this excellent article.
1. An organization whose document listing the documents (yes, they really had one) was 32 pages long. When a process issue came up, rather than actually solve the problem, the head honcho ordered that a new document be written and added to the haystack.
2. An ISO-9000 assessor who saw that Facilities people were counting the 12"-square floor tiles to estimate the length coppoer tubing needed for a new air line. We blew an hour before she was convinced not to demand calibration of the tile dimensions.
Documents
Great story, but how does one get management to see what is in front of them?
The Same Applies to Software
What's fascinating about this principle is that it applies to any form of communication.
When we get positive feedback about a particular area of our software, it is almost always because we have tuned into the customer's needs in that area, and simplified to focus on the important features.
Apple probably has the best reputation for this in the software world, although Microsoft is catching up fast with Windows 7.
Thanks for the great article, I use the Thomas Jefferson quote in your book all the time. "Be flexible in style, but unwavering like a rock in principle."
David
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